The majority of lawn and plant irrigation systems are controlled based on timing. Under this method, a controller is programmed so that water is delivered during set times and for set durations. For optimal operation and water savings, the operator has to frequently adjust the frequency and duration of the watering to adjust for varying weather, soil conditions, and plant conditions. Such adjustments by the users are seldom performed and most users end up overwatering their lawns and plants in an attempt to ensure plant health despite varying conditions. This wastes a great deal of water both on the individual level and in the aggregate on a municipal level.
In addition, lawns are generally irrigated using sprinkler heads that tend to send water in a radial or angular distribution making it difficult to uniformly irrigate a given lawn or plant area. Under such non-uniform irrigation, the user ends up over-irrigating some areas to ensure that less irrigated areas get enough water to maintain greenness. Furthermore, sprinklers deliver water in way that is easily misdirected by moderate wind.
Recently drip irrigation has been increasingly utilized for planter areas. While drip irrigation can reduce water consumption compared to sprinklers, the same overwatering still occurs since the need for frequent monitoring and adjusting of watering schedules, which is tedious and seldom performed, remains. In addition, drip irrigation is not used for lawn areas, which frequently consume the most irrigation water.
Furthermore, both sprinkler and drip irrigation systems require installing a grid of irrigation pipes and tubes that are mostly installed underground resulting in high cost.
Thus, currently utilized irrigation systems do not adjust to conditions and hence tend to overwater, they do not accurately deliver water and hence they tent to waste water, and they do not uniformly deliver water and hence tend to overwater. Also, installation of most of these systems is costly because the installation requires underground pipe burials.
Additionally, the current systems do not accurately adjust the duration or timing of the watering based on the condition of the lawns or plants and are unable to water one small spot more or less than the rest of the area based on the plant or lawn needs of that spot since the user rarely, due to the tediousness of the task, readjusts the watering proportion within a sprinkler system once the system is installed.